


astronomy in reverse

by stelian



Series: thought you were a constellation [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Autistic Keith (Voltron), Dissociation, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Matt Holt/Shiro, Introspection, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Season 2 spoilers, broganes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 03:09:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9415469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stelian/pseuds/stelian
Summary: They're brothers. They'll always find each other.





	

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from venus by sleeping at last, which is a lovely song that really fits these two in my opinion.

Shiro finds Keith first.

He’s curled up in a storage closet, head resting against the wall and knees tucked up close to his chin. The position is tight, and he can feel his shoulders cramping and his legs growing sore, but it’s _quiet._ Sometimes it gets loud out there, too loud for him to focus; he feels lost. Small. A speck amongst giants.

 _Why am I here?_ he always wonders when he ends up here, desperately trying to pull himself back together. _Why did I decided to do this?_

The answer comes, a few seconds later, in a voice that’s his but also not:

 _Because it calls you. Because you have nowhere else to go. Because you need to do_ something _with your life to find meaning._

And he’s at that point, where he starts to unite himself again, enough to get out of a dusty closet and maybe try to go to class, when the door opens and someone almost steps on his foot. The light floods his eyes, and it’s a lot to handle again-

“Oh, sorry! I didn’t realize anyone was in here.”

He looks up and there’s someone staring down at him, arms loaded with old-looking equipment that probably doesn’t even work anymore. Keith isn’t good with expressions, not at all, but there’s nothing hateful in his eyes. He looks…. Concerned, maybe?

“Hey, are you all right down there?”

And Keith doesn’t respond because he’s still a little overwhelmed, but he does manage a nod.

“Are you sure? You don’t look all that comfortable.”

He shrugs, and the person kneels down at that point. Like someone would when they talk to a child. Keith shrinks back, really just wanting his quiet back, but then he says-

“So, I’m guessing you’re a first-year, and that means you probably have class right now. Or, at least, you’ve been in class for a while now. Which means someone out there is really concerned about where you are.”

Keith says nothing.

“All I’m saying is, there are places that are a lot better to get a quiet moment than a closet. You’ll be really sore tomorrow if you stay in a position like that. Do you want to move?”

He hesitates, and then he nods slowly. The stranger smiles, kind, and reaches out a hand to help him get up. For all that Keith can tell, he’s nothing but patient.

So Keith slings an arm around his shoulder and lets himself be led to the room he shares with three other boys. He lays back on the bunk, ignoring the way the texture grates his skin, feeling suddenly sleepy.

“Hey, go ahead and take a nap. I’ll tell your teacher that you got really sick and then I probably should head back to class. Do you need anything?”

Keith just blinks at him, finding it difficult to stay awake.

“Okay, good. I’ll pop back in afterwards to check on you.” He pauses in the doorway, then; looks at him again. “Oh, right. You can call me Shiro. I’ll see you soon.”

He falls asleep soon after.

 

When Shiro comes back a few hours later, one of the other boys is there. He’s talking, like always; however, when Shiro comes in, he freezes.

“How do you know him? That guy’s like, amazing. I want to meet him! Show me your tricks!” he asks once he’s left.

Keith doesn’t bother responding.

* * *

 

Keith finds Shiro in the husk of a ship and he doesn’t even know it at first.

He’s listened to Garrison frequencies for months trying to find any sign of him, but the only mentions of Kerberos were about the girl who kept hacking their files. After a while, he still listened in, but his hope dwindled.

_He’s not dead. He can’t be dead._

Because, of all things, “pilot error”? Everyone who knew Takashi Shirogane knew that he never crashed a simulation. Hell, he held records on almost all of them, except for the ones that Keith had beaten. Experienced pilots couldn’t fly the way he did.

Keith _knew_ he couldn’t dead. And yet. And yet. Sometimes his mind skipped back to _dead, dead, dead_ and he couldn’t block it out, and sometimes hope ran low, but-

But then he sees the body on a table, and his hope flares and then dies because, at a first look, this isn’t him. The body’s different, the skin’s too pale, the-

The face is the same, and his heart skips. Same jawline, same cheekbones, same ridiculous hair and floppy bangs, and-

 _You’re projecting_ , he tells himself, _this isn’t real, you’re just imagining it-_

And he stops himself.

This is Shiro.

It has to be.

So he’s happy, because he found him after he’d stopped hoping, but he’s terrified because _something_ happened that he can’t comprehend. But he’ll find out, he’s smart, he can do it. He can do it.

_He can do it._

He finds Shiro again, a few hours later, after he’d run outside and retched the can of soup that had been his official Welcome Back To Earth Meal. Keith sees the muscles that weren’t there a year ago but then also sees the way he’d stared at the food as if it were foreign ( _a year in space could do that, he tells himself, but there’s something_ weird), and he realizes that maybe he’d been farther away than he’d thought.

“It’s good to have you back,” he says, and he catches the way Shiro looks at the sky when he says, “It’s good to be back,” and Keith knows that he’s not back, not fully, but he’s _here_ and that’s better than he’d had for a year and he decides he’ll take it.

* * *

 

Shiro finds him a week before he’s scheduled to launch.

Keith is sitting on the roof, legs dangling off the side, looking at the stars and _feeling_ that pull that he’d felt his whole life. He was destined for the stars, he’d told himself before; there has to be something up there. Something better.

“Hey,” Shiro says, coming to sit beside him. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m.... I’m holding on.” He looks over at him, at the face he won’t see for months, and he makes himself remember just in case he won’t see him again. “How are you doing?”

Shiro laughs, just the slightest bit. “I’m okay, I guess. It’s scary, but I think I’m excited.” He looks up with Keith at that moment, as if trying to memorize the night sky. “Sometimes it doesn’t feel real, you know? There’s no way I should’ve been picked for this, but… I guess it just happened?”

“You’re only excited because you get to spend all of that time with _Matt_ ,” Keith says, and Shiro punches his shoulder. “What, it’s true! Except his dad is there so you just _can’t_ make your move. Or you could try to impress him so once you get back you two can go right into a relationship.”

“Shut up, Keith,” Shiro says, and he’s laughing again, the sound light and pure and it brings Keith the kind of joy he hadn’t thought was possible. “Although, while I’m gone, _you_ can close in on that-”

Keith just yells, “Nope!” and clasps a hand over Shiro’s mouth. And then he’s doubled over and the laughter is contagious so there’s Keith, with tears in his eyes because he’s laughing so hard, and at the same time he’s trying not to think about how much-

“I’m going to miss you,” he says, and he immediately rolls his eyes because that was  _not_ meant to come out, not at all. Shiro stops laughing, then, and he inches closer to Keith before wrapping an arm around his shoulder.

“Hey, I’ll miss you too. But we can at least communicate so it won’t be like we’re completely apart.” He hesitates, and then adds, “You know you’re like a brother to me, right?”

The word is weird to Keith, who hasn’t had a family for years and even then it was just him and his dad, but at the same time it brings emotions to him that he’s not prepared for. Shiro pulls him closer and they sit in silence for a while.

“I’ll be back soon,” Shiro says, his voice soft in a way more befitting of such a still night. “It’ll go faster than you realize.”

It isn’t.

* * *

 Keith finds Shiro when he’s too far in his own head to focus on the outside world.

It’s scary, to watch him freeze and stare or get restless and suspicious or, sometimes, when he’s distant and detached but he’ll act like he’s fine but Keith _knows_ he’s not all there.

But it’s worst when they’re in Voltron and they feel the bond spike and prepare for a danger that’s not there, not really; they’ll feel the thing holding them together go still and quiet and they _know_ that he’s not there ,and no matter how hard they try to pull him back, he’s gone somewhere they can’t help him.

Keith lets Shiro sag against him after they reclaim the castle and Hunk takes Lance to a cryopod. He’s supposed to be taking care of him, making sure there aren’t any injuries they weren’t aware of, and then taking him to get rest, but…

But Shiro’s so _tired_ , and Keith knows he’s barely there. If he had to guess, he’d probably detached when Sendak had tried to torture him and had been distant ever since.

“Hey,” Keith says, trying to keep his voice light and soft. “Can you tell me where you are?”

It was something Shiro had asked him back at the Garrison when he’d start to get overwhelmed and he couldn’t tell stimuli apart. It feels weird to parrot it back and the words are wrong in his mouth because he can’t manage the compassion that had been used on him, but he tries.

“Not sure,” Shiro chokes out, and Keith pulls him closer.

“You’re in the Castle of Lions, newly safe because of Pidge and… and all of us, really. You’re safe now. We took care of Sendak and all of the Galra are gone. Do you understand?” The fact that Shiro hesitates before agreeing hurts him somewhere, but that’s a problem for later. “Now all you need to do is get some rest. You’re pretty banged up from that fight, so we could pop you in a cryopod-”

“No,” he says. “Not a pod.”

“Okay, we won’t do that. You should at least sleep, though. Sleep is important.” Keith knows he’s really not one to talk when it comes to not sleeping, but he’s going to ignore the hypocrisy for just a moment. “I’ll help you there.”

It’s difficult because Shiro’s a head taller than he is and quite a bit heavier, but he somehow manages to get him to his room and situated on the bed.

“Hey, I’m not going anywhere. You try to sleep.”

And he does. It’s easy to see when the tension eases out of him and he seems to relax, finally, and Keith marks it as an achievement that he _finally_ got Shiro to rest. Once he’s sure he’s asleep, Keith curls up on the floor and drifts off himself.

He’s woken up a bit later when Shiro jerks and cries out, but he makes his way over and tries to get him back to sleep. Keith isn’t a stranger to nightmares, after all, and Shiro’s exhausted enough that it’s easy for him to fall back to sleep.

Keith hates the Galra a little more every time he’s with Shiro.

* * *

 

Shiro finds Keith when he’s desperate, trapped; his Lion won’t respond and Zarkon’s _right there_ and his mind’s a mixture of anger and fear, and then-

And then he’s safe, suddenly; Shiro’s got him and he knows that he’ll make it, that _they’ll_ make it.

And then the wormhole destabilizes.

* * *

 

Keith finds Shiro half-dead and surrounded by feral creatures.

It’s uncomfortable that he could lose him again, after he’s traveled around the universe and got him back. Asking the Black Lion to open up to him is a longshot, a measure of desperation because fighting the creatures himself would get them both killed, but she opens up.

And then it’s a matter of surviving until they can be rescued, which might be the biggest challenge because Shiro’s _really_ not doing well. He’s awake and talking, but Keith can see the pain from the wound and being thrown around and the tension from fighting Haggar, and it’s- it’s not good.

But for the first time since he came back he’s seeing Shiro, the _real_ one who’s just over twenty and makes shitty jokes when he’s stressed, who writes essays that switch languages in the middle while he’s half-asleep. There’s no mask of certainty, no fake persona to put them at ease. It’s just… it’s just _Shiro._ Unrestrained, unhidden.

Keith pretends they’re just sitting on the roof like they used to, talking about everything and nothing at the same time. Teasing him about his ridiculous crush on Matthew Holt.

_If I don’t make it out of here, I want you to lead Voltron._

He chooses not to think about that.

* * *

 Shiro finds Keith when he’s lost and exhausted and terrified.

He’s not sure what’s real or not, not really; not when the projections were so realistic. It _hurts_ ; everything hurts. He’s pretty sure his shoulder’s dislocated and it throbs when he moves a certain way, but he’s alive. He made it longer than he thought.

And he’s flooded; it’s a small revelation, less than half of a sentence. But it confirms his fears, and he doesn’t know what to do with it. He just made a bond with the others, and now they’ll hate him because he’s Galra, he _is_ their enemy, but…

“You’re still you. Nothing about you is different now that you know you’re Galra.” Shiro puts a hand on his shoulder, and Keith leans into the contact in a way he hasn’t for a long time.

“How can you say that when you’ve seen what they do?”

Shiro just looks at him in a way that’s strange, that Keith can’t quite understand. “I’ve seen Galra do great things and terrible things, and I’ve known you long enough to know you’re one of the good ones.”

Keith says nothing; his mind is still reeling. But Shiro pulls him closer and he says, “I’m proud of you, you know? I know what it’s like to fight like that and to be stuck somewhere where you can’t tell what’s real, and it’s pretty terrible. But you never gave in.” He gives him a smile, and says, “You’re strong. Be proud of that.”

Keith thinks of the way that space seemed to call to him; the way he never felt right on Earth. It makes sense.

He was never meant to be there.

 _This_ is where he was meant to be. Saving worlds. Taking down Zarkon, bit by bit.

The fear still eats at him; the adrenaline from the trials still runs through his blood. But he doesn’t feel like he’s going to be immediately thrown out from the friends he’s just made.

* * *

 Keith doesn’t find Shiro after the fight with Zarkon.

He sits awake at night, unable to sleep because he can’t understand how he went missing. No one saw or heard from him, but they’d assumed that was just from the fight.

For the second time, he’s lost in space.

And Keith is alone, but not really because he has a whole team that looks to him.

But he’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel a little empty without him there.

* * *

 

Shiro doesn’t find Keith after he disappears.

Every day Keith expects to wake up and he’ll be there again; somehow, he’ll come back from wherever he is they’ll feel whole again.

But it doesn’t happen.

* * *

 

Keith finds Shiro halfway across the universe.

It’s been too long, again. The similarities to the aftermath of the Kerberos mission is uncomfortable, for him and for Pidge. They cling onto hope, somehow. When Pidge uses one of her programs to trace the energy signals from his arm, there’s finally a flood of relief. He’s alive, somewhere. They don’t know where, and more likely than not, he’s somewhere in a Galra ship again.

But it’s _something_.

They don’t expect to find Matt Holt. Pidge stays up for days decoding information and trying to find the family she thought she’d lost, not when she’s so close. So when they find a rebel outpost hidden by a dying star and they see him there, alive, it’s a victory no one expected.

And then they see behind him.

Keith leaps on Shiro when he sees him. The reciprocation is sluggish, but there. He wants to ask how he got there, what happened after the fight, but the questions can wait for later. “I can’t believe I lost you again,” he says, tears starting to break free.

“It won’t happen again,” Shiro says, and he sounds quiet in a way that’s alarming, but another issue for later. “I won’t let it happen again.”

But Keith knows, even if it would happen again, if he was lost in space for a third time and there was little hope of return, they’d still find each other.

They were brothers, in all but blood.

They’d always find each other.

**Author's Note:**

> WOW season 2 was a ride! i really couldn't get over the relationship between these two because broganes literally KILLS me. this was written very quickly so i'm sorry for any errors you see here!
> 
> feel free to talk to me on [tumblr](http://pippims.tumblr.com) where you can join me in screaming about gay space children


End file.
